| 1. | a tiny, fanciful, good-natured brown elf who secretly helps at night with household chores. |
| 2. | a small, chewy, cakelike cookie, usually made with chocolate and containing nuts. |
| 3. | Australian. a bread with currants, baked in a camp oven. |
| 4. | (sometimes initial capital letter ) a member of the junior division of the Girl Scouts or the Girl Guides, being a girl in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade and usually between 6 and 8 years old. |
| 1. | Charles Brock⋅den [brok-duh n] , 1771–1810, U.S. novelist. |
| 2. | Clifford (“Brownie” ), 1930–56, U.S. jazz trumpeter. |
| 3. | Edmund Gerald, Jr. (Jerry ), born 1938, U.S. politician: governor of California 1975–83. |
| 4. | Herbert Charles, 1912–2004, U.S. chemist, born in England: Nobel prize 1979. |
| 5. | James Nathaniel (Jimmy ), born 1936, U.S. football player and actor. |
| 6. | John (“Old Brown of Osawatomie” ), 1800–59, U.S. abolitionist: leader of the attack at Harpers Ferry, where he was captured, tried for treason, and hanged. |
| 7. | Margaret Wise, 1910–52, U.S. author noted for early-childhood books. |
| 8. | Olympia, 1835–1926, U.S. women's-rights activist and Universalist minister: first American woman ordained by a major church. |
| 9. | Robert, 1773–1858, Scottish botanist. |
brown-nose
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Brown (broun), Michael. Born 1941.
American geneticist. He shared a 1985 Nobel Prize for discoveries related to cholesterol metabolism.
brownie
in English and Scottish folklore, a small, industrious fairy or hobgoblin believed to inhabit houses and barns. Rarely seen, he was often heard at night, cleaning and doing housework; he also sometimes mischievously disarranged rooms. He would ride for the midwife, and in Cornwall he caused swarming bees to settle quickly. Cream or bread and milk might be left for him, but other gifts offended him. If one made him a suit of clothes, he would put it on and then vanish, never to return
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